Independent 13: As Moonlight Unto Sunlight
by Aadler
Summary: Small changes can make larger changes … but what if the ripples spread for centuries?
1. Part 1

**As Moonlight Unto Sunlight  
**_(A Tale of the Vampyres)_  
by Aadler  
**Copyright August 2012**

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Disclaimer: Characters from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ and _Angel: the Series_ are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

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Part I

_No, despite the subtitle, this story will feature neither the presence nor the observations of Andrew Wells. A shame, really, for the events and insights soon to be recounted would thrill him to the depths of his geekish soul. True love, tragic loss, terrible sins deeply regretted but never to be completely absolved. Courage and sacrifice and anguish and … well, sex is in there, too. Not a central feature (and be assured, reader, there will be no bird's-eye view or anatomically detailed description of the proceedings),but it does keep cropping up. The Vampyre With a Soul, the cursed creature with the face of an angel and a past steeped in torment and sadism and shame, simply cannot feature in _**any**_ story without sex jumping in there somewhere._

_Good sex. Bad sex. Perverse (and perverted) sex. It'll be there, bloody and wistful and tender and savage and heartbreaking … Yeah. Like I said already, we won't actually show any of that. But it'll be _**there,**_ by jiminy!_

_We know how it begins, of course, and how that infamous name was first heard. Galway, Ireland, 1753. A young man, newly dead (only not exactly) returns to the home he had vowed to leave behind him forever. He can't enter without an invitation … but he is invited. His young sister welcomes him, innocently rejoicing, believing him to be an angel —_

_Hence the name. A source, in the centuries to come, of awful irony and demonic laughter … and, long afterward, of ceaseless terrible self-flagellation._

'Angel'?

_Anything but._

~ – ~ – ~

In retrospect, it really should have surprised no one.

Giles could still recall Buffy's peevish initial report on the inscrutable newcomer who had sought her out. 'Annoying' had featured heavily (and frequently) in that report, along with 'cryptic' and 'broody'. Still, the oblique warning had signally contributed to forestalling the Harvest, and Angel's more direct aid — in dealing with Natalie French, the transformed Andrew Borba at the Sunnydale Funeral Home, even the brief savage melee against the Three — had accustomed them to thinking of this new acquaintance as an occasional (albeit mysterious) ally.

Really, they should have known better. After all, who walked unafraid in Sunnydale at night? Only the blithely clueless, the Slayer herself … and the creatures she hunted.

The last of which, it would now seem, included Angel.

That should have resolved the matter in short order, if not necessarily to the satisfaction of all. Slayer _here,_ vampire _there_ … in the enduring paradigm, unless one of them promptly and successfully fled, one of them would immediately and brutally die. That might be a grim equation, but it was … clean. Straightforward.

Trust _this_ Slayer to pop up with an inconvenient exception.

A soul? A vampire with a _soul?_ The very concept was nonsensical, even oxymoronic. Yet there was a certain plausibility to the story Buffy had repeated from Angel. Passion, vengeance, disregard for the dangerous ramifications of certain magics … those were, indeed, hallmarks of the Rom, and even more so for their forebears over a century ago. And how better to punish a demon than by chaining it to a human soul? Furthermore, the tale corresponded to events and locations already recorded in the Watchers' Diaries …

… which, along with confirmation of identity, had provided some extremely disturbing historical detail.

_"You must remember,"_ Giles had cautioned his Slayer, _"that while it is true that 'the one with the angelic face' dropped out of sight after 1898, the record before then was even more appalling than for other vampires —"_

_"Let me guess,"_ Buffy interrupted. _"A vicious, violent animal, right?"_

_"To the contrary,"_ came the grave but emphatic rebuttal. _"No animal ever took such intense, avid delight in inflicting terror and torment."_

But then, Angel had not actually been the only vampire contributing to that bloody reputation, the implications (and culmination) of which had brought them to their current situation.

Giles could hear Buffy, Xander and Willow out in the main library area, speaking in what they may have imagined were hushed tones. Response to the most recent events (accusations, recriminations, revelations, gunfire at the Bronze, the attempt by Angel's spurned progenitor to kill the Slayer, only to die instead at Angel's reluctant hand) required certain readjustments in attitude and perspective … and, apparently, 'talking it out' — Americans! — was a vital part of the process.

"— I'm just saying, killing your … what d'they call it, 'sire'? … that shows _serious_ commitment."

"Yeah, well, I seriously wasn't sure which way it would go for a while there. If you could have seen how they _were_ toward each other …"

"Oh. You … you mean … you think they used to have …?"

"Sex?" Buffy's voice had distinctly hardened. "Nasty, depraved, disgusting, God-will-strike-you-both-dead sex? Count on it. Those two were absolutely _churning_ with history."

_"Oh."_ Pause. "Well, they _were_ evil. And, and one of them still was. Evil, I mean."

"I'm still trying to wrap my brain around all this. It's … so much more disturbing than not."

"If by that you mean the thought makes you want to hurl? you and me both, fella."

They were coming to terms, Giles realized. Despite the intense emotions involved (and the emotional entanglements taking root here were powerful, snarled, and deep), they were working past their first reactions. Reaching an accommodation within themselves and among each other. It might take some time yet, and doubtless would, but the outcome seemed already clear:

Angel would remain, and probably be accepted eventually as a part of the team.

Now, if only Giles himself could decide whether or not that was a good thing …

~ – ~ – ~

_They rutted and slaughtered their way across a continent, the handsome demon with laughing eyes and his deceptively demure consort. They changed identities and roles according to need, situation, or whim, with the only constants being love of wickedness for its own sake and delight in the infliction of agony and death._

_They were in their element in the royal courts of pre-revolutionary France (though even in _**that**_ decadent society they could calculate their behavior to produce the desired degree of scandal), and preyed in rapturous excess throughout the Terror following the collapse of the _ancien régime_. On leaving France behind them (fortunately for Buonaparte's ambitions), they followed war and calamity and unrest whenever they wanted to take advantage of existing misery … or, if more inclined to _**create**_ it, they scoured like a pestilence through peaceful hamlets and bustling mercantile cities._

_For over a century they were inseparable. Sometimes they created others (Penn, James and Elizabeth, later the mad Drusilla and still later William the Bloody) and allowed them to travel along, diverge on their own and reconnect or not according to mood and happenstance. Eventually this ever-shifting coterie — but always with the two of them as its core — acquired a name of its own in the Watchers' annals:_

_The Scourge of Europe._

~ – ~ – ~

Getting out of the school had been a nightmare, Xander fighting the impulse to hurry — _take your time, move soft, stay quiet, watch and listen, can't be caught, have to get through_ — while likewise terrified by the thought of going too slow, taking too long, returning too late, failing through overcaution rather than recklessness. Then there was the question of what they could do even if he _did_ make it out and find Angel quickly enough; this Spike character had clearly brought along a lot of other vampires for the raid on Parent-Teacher Night, and no matter how impressive Angel might be in a fight, it would still be just the two of them (and Buffy, don't forget Buffy!) against obscenely lopsided odds. But it was _something,_ and Xander would gladly gamble his life on the chance of accomplishing enough to make a difference.

Now he was out, and soft-footing across the grass toward the street, mind leaping ahead to the next problem: where to actually _find_ Angel? Could be anywhere, after dark, and for sure there wasn't time enough to check the entire town (_got_ to see about getting cell phones for everybody, though it might be tricky teaching modern tech to someone who had been lurking around the edges of society for nearly a quarter of a millennium) … then a shadowy figure all but materialized in front of him, and Xander jerked back, heart lurching. _Oh, God, another one of them —!_

Which, yes it was, technically speaking. Angel stared past Xander, eyes questing through the darkness as if he were inconsequential or even nonexistent. Only one word, more statement than question: "Spike?"

Xander nodded. "Must have decided to start the party early," he said, feeling himself begin to relax just the least bit. "And brought bunches of fun buddies along to play."

"How many?"

"Don't know." Xander shook his head. "The way they seemed to hit everywhere at once, though? I'm thinking at least a dozen."

Angel regarded Xander without expression. "And you'll want us to try and fight them all. Go straight at them, just the two of us."

"Well, not exactly." Xander frowned, trying to think. "We can play it sneaky, right? Infiltrate, take them out a few at a time. That would work, wouldn't it?"

Instead of answering, Angel reached out with casual, impossible quickness, one hand closing on Xander's throat. He jerked, instinctively trying to pull away, but the strength in those cool fingers was irresistible.

Gathering all his control, Xander made himself stop fighting, forced his muscles to relax, and looked to Angel with desperate calm. "I trust you," he said, struggling to believe it.

Those bleak, empty eyes met his without any answering emotion. "You're a fool," Angel told him flatly. Then a sharp yank, and they were moving together toward the darkened school. "Come on," Angel said, voice even and emotionless. "Let's go show Spike what I caught."

~ – ~ – ~

_As the decades passed, and the two of them contested to surpass one another in creative cruelty and atrocity, they developed their own specialties. He enjoyed taking on the dress and mannerisms of the aristocracy to which he had never belonged; she just as thoroughly despised the class, but focused on subverting it from within, mocking it and using its weaknesses as the avenue for destruction. He saw himself as an artist; she, by contrast, was simply relentless. (On one occasion, she responded to a curled lip and a dismissive comment by stretching retribution out over more than seventy years: killing the eldest son in each generation, then returning years later to kill the father and impoverish the remaining family, exulting in each reiteration of this delicious vengeance.)_

_They took their pleasure in the suffering of others. Then the path of vengeance was reversed, the Kalderash exacted retribution from Angel, and the dynamic forcibly changed. Nearly a century of remorse, of withdrawal and self-punishment and self-degradation, the aching need to atone for the unforgivable …_

_Then, unexpectedly, relief. Acceptance and new meaning from the most unlikely source; caring and concern from one who had every reason to despise all vampires and unswervingly seek their utter destruction. Hope, and yearning, and a slow, hesitantly growing belief in the possibility of redemption …_

_Then fulfillment. Passion and trust and ecstasy, joy in the arms of one beloved. Bliss. A moment of perfect happiness —_

_— and the scourge began anew._

~ – ~ – ~

It was stupid and he knew it, but he couldn't make himself do anything else. From a chair opposite the nurses' station, Xander watched the waiting room, the hall, every point of access leading to Buffy's room. As a protector he was less than useless, but Buffy was still delirious and helpless, Slayer strength no protection against _the frigging flu._ If she couldn't watch out for herself, he was there to do such watching as he could.

Then he heard it, an airy humming from a voice obscenely light and melodious, and Xander was on his feet as Angel came into view. Carrying a bouquet (why didn't the flowers wither and fall apart in that dead hand?), face set in a demon's good humor. Xander moved to block the hall: no good, he couldn't do any good here, but he would die where he stood before he moved. Angel stopped in front of him, an eyebrow lifting in sardonic amusement, and Xander said harshly, "Visiting hours are over."

The smile. Always the smile. Mocking, tilted with cruel pleasure, making a sick parody of the face that had once belonged to an ally (and, for one of them, so much more). "They'd make an exception for me, surely? I mean, we've all been _so close_ to one another."

"They're pretty strict about the rules here," Xander replied, working to keep his voice even. "You can always try during the day. High noon, I'm thinking."

The smile hadn't shifted, but there was a hard glitter in the dark eyes. "Let's be serious here," Angel said, almost gently. "If I decide to go on into Buffy's room, do you believe for one tiny little second that you could prevent it?"

"I'd give it my best," Xander shot back. "Not that I think it'd do a lot of good, you're right on that. That security guard at the soda machine? He wouldn't accomplish much, either. Or the orderlies. Or those cops over there. None of us could stop you." He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice. "But all of us? That might be different. That, I wouldn't mind trying." His eyes locked with Angel's. "Any time you're ready, Overbite."

Angel glanced up and down the hall, assessing, unconcerned. Then back to Xander, and something had changed in the smile. "Always the white knight. Do you have any idea how much _fun_ it is to watch you try to play hero?" A shrug, a smirk. "But not nearly as much fun as the thought of you remembering what took us to this point. What it was that brought me out, set me free." Angel leaned in close, voice softening to almost a croon. "It must just eat you up."

If the jab had been intended to fluster him, its effect was the precise opposite. With the ice-cold calm of unalloyed hatred, Xander said quietly, "You're gonna die. And even if there's no way I can do it myself, I'll make sure to be there to see it."

"This is me being terrified," Angel said, and slapped the flowers against Xander's chest with a soft laugh. "Tell her I stopped by. Tell her all about how you protected her. She'll love that."

Then the vampire was gone, and Xander settled back into the waiting room chair before his legs could give out beneath him.

He would never tell Buffy about this … but he would do everything in his power to keep the promise he had just made.


	2. Part 2

Part II

_For the first time in nearly a century, the destroying Angel once again walked a fearful earth without the encumbrance of a soul. The resulting depredations should have been written in serried volumes of blood … but a disparate set of factors combined to reduce the immediate impact._

_First was the re-alliance with Drusilla and Spike. A natural choice, almost automatic with all the survivors of the original hellish "family" now in Sunnydale, it nonetheless provided distractions. The wheelchair-bound Spike to be taunted, mocked, and made to burn in his own impotence (boy had _**always**_ had to be kept in his place, and the current situation was simply too convenient to ignore). Drusilla to be seduced all over again: little effort needed there, but enjoyable in its own right, and it never hurt to re-emphasize just where the power and desire had always resided, and now did again. Taking over, directing, disciplining and shaping the hodgepodge of minions Spike and Drusilla had accumulated, shatter-shot, in their disorganized Sunnydale campaign._

_Mostly, though, there was the matter of determining how to proceed against the Slayer and her human helpers._

_As things now stood, that had to be evaluated as two separate issues, and then the facets integrated into a solution that would satisfy every imperative. The Slayer was one facet: for all Angel's dismissive contempt of the pride Spike took in having killed two Slayers (a helpless victim bled and died just as gratifyingly as a "worthy opponent", and screamed so much more entertainingly), there would be no bearing the whelp if he racked up yet another, so this one had to be Angel's. The second facet …_

_Even now, it was almost intolerable to think about. The human who had won the remorseful monster's heart. Tearful confidences, whining confessions of past sins, moonbeam dreams of shared bliss and the revolting _**memory**_ of all that yearning hope. Angel had loved a human — loved! — and that kind of thing couldn't simply be shrugged off. No, the object of that puling devotion had to pay, to suffer, to have every vestige of life and happiness torn away in pain and terror, and die at last cursing the hateful day that had seen the filthy connection begin._

_Only in that way could the last vestiges of the Vampire With a Soul be finally, suitably obliterated._

_So, time taken, and a slow, delicate, self-serving approach to what should have been a direct, brutal task. There was plenty of pleasure to be had in the process, to be sure. The periodic butchery of the former lover's classmates, "messages" to the Slayer. The killing and posing of the gypsy computer teacher, which had served fourfold purposes (long-overdue payback to the Kalderash; pre-emptive strike to prevent the re-imposition of the hated soul; further demoralization of the Slayer; and, not to be minimized, the delicious recognition of _**just how much**_ it had hurt the Watcher). Even — oh, yes — Spike's frustration at how protracted this vengeance was proving to be._

_The long-term consequences, however, turned out to be something else again. Who could have predicted betrayal from one of the inner circle, teaming with the Slayer _**against**_ Angel? Who would have expected the forsaken lover to show such depths of ingenuity, determination, refusal to surrender? Who could have known that a neophyte with no apparent mystical capability might succeed in recreating the Kalderash ensoulment process?_

_Yet that was what happened. Treachery from within, a surprise attack at the critical moment, and Drusilla and Spike abruptly departing Sunnydale (one unconscious, the other gleefully knocking down highway signs with the DeSoto every few miles) while Angel and the Slayer fought the climactic battle alone. The retrieved soul crashing like a thunderbolt back into the unwilling vessel from whom it had been stripped. Acathla opening a vortex to Hell, and the Slayer's sword sealing that passage in a strike that hurled the now-innocent vampire into an eternity of torture …_

_… and, months later, Angel being ejected, naked and whimpering and rather more than half-insane, back into the empty mansion in Sunnydale. To be found almost immediately by a stunned Slayer, and kept and protected until healing could take its course …_

_… which action, of course, bore consequences of its own._

~ – ~ – ~

The confrontation in the library was over, the awful litany of accusation ended for now, but Buffy felt like a beaten gong, body still quivering from the blows (words, only words, but never had any fists struck so hard) directed against her. They had it all wrong, they didn't _understand_ … except they weren't wrong, not entirely, and separating out her misdeeds from their misunderstandings was a task beyond the capabilities of her tired brain.

For weeks she had been juggling three lives: school and friends and family; then the necessary activities of the Slayer; and finally the harrowing, unrewarding, maddeningly slow process of nursing Angel back to health and stability. Each of those lives seemed to have _something_ that had to be kept hidden, and the pressure had built until she had been ready to scream for relief.

This wasn't relief. The biggest secret was out, finally (Angel alive, Angel back, the vampire being cared for by the Slayer), but in a way that had only made everything worse. She had been trying so hard to be responsible, to be understanding, to come to terms with things that were all but impossible to reconcile. Now she was being _blamed_ for all her efforts.

She hadn't forgotten that she wasn't the only one carrying wounds, but she had let herself lose sight of just how deep those wounds ran in the others, and how devastating it would be to have the stitches all ripped out without warning.

Cordelia had been the easiest to bear. _"Something for memory lane here: last time around, Angel barely laid a hand on the high-and-mighty Slayer … because, hey, _**your**_ vampire squeeze was way more interested in coming after_ **US.**_"_ Petty, biting, direct, but lacking the knifelike thrust to the heart.

Worse was Willow. _"Nobody's here to blame you, Buffy."_ (Meaning they all blamed her.) _"I feel that when it comes to Angel, you can't see straight."_ (As if any of them could!) The very earnestness of the attempts to forestall censure made it clear just how completely Willow believed Buffy's actions needed defense.

Giles … oh, God, Giles. The last awful blow, delivered after all the others had left: _"I won't remind you that the fate of the world often lies with the Slayer. What would be the point? Nor shall I remind you that you've jeopardized the lives of all that you hold dear by harboring a known murderer. But sadly, I must remind you that Angel tortured me … for hours … for pleasure. You should have told me that this, this _**creature**_ was alive. You didn't. You have no respect for me, or the job I perform."_ Words driven into her like remorseless blows on a chisel.

But worst, worst beyond description, was Xander. Not just what he said: _"Hope not. Because I think you're harboring a vicious killer." "I don't need an excuse. I think lots of dead people actually constitutes a reason."_ Not even the pitiless harshness in his voice, or the hate in his eyes, because she knew they weren't directed at her. No, what made it so indescribably horrible was the understanding of what lay underneath it all.

She knew. Knew, from a careless comment long after the fact, that Willow had tried to send word through Xander that she was about to make another attempt at restoring Angel's soul. Knew exactly why Xander had delivered an entirely different message: _"She says … she says you know what you have to do. It's all up to you now."_ Knew why he could never forgive, why only Angel's death would ever be enough to satisfy him.

The price of that deception had been so high. A summer spent in anonymous limbo, cut off from all contact, lost in pain and self-loathing and the aching need to forget. A belated return that only triggered a tag-team chorus of recrimination, quickly regretted but never forgotten. The slow, halting recovery from a flurry of wounds, everyone in their entire group, that imperfect healing buttressed by the unspoken mandate to never speak of the one who had caused it all.

Angel. Always, _always,_ **always,** it went back to Angel …

Buffy came to an abrupt halt. She had been walking, almost blindly (on her way home, though she hadn't consciously realized it), while the maelstrom of her thoughts whirled through her. Now, ahead of her, Xander stood blocking the sidewalk. Eyes still hard, mouth still tight, and when he spoke there was no attempt to throttle the savagery in his voice. "You knew. Knew what this would mean to us. Knew what it would mean to _me."_

She nodded, eyes suddenly flooding with the tears she had successfully quelled till now. "Yes," she whispered.

"Why?" He grabbed her by the shoulders, and even though she could have broken him like a spaghetti sculpture, she was helpless now. "Why didn't you tell me? **Why didn't you tell me?!"**

_Because I know what you did,_ she couldn't say. _Because you lied, and made me kill Angel — at least that's what we both thought it would be — and I just wasn't ready to face what that said about you._

The words were there, but they wouldn't leave her lips. She looked to him, stricken, lost, and the only answer possible for her was, "I couldn't." Again, too faintly to be heard but only read in the shape of her lips: _I couldn't._

~ – ~ – ~

_Trust. It may take a long time to be earned, or (justified or not) granted quickly. Once lost, however, its recovery is a halting, convoluted process, with frequent reverses and substantial likelihood of failure along the way. Unsouled, Angel had killed and tortured and lightheartedly tried to end the world … and, not worse but perhaps more difficult to forgive, had taken love and twisted it into a weapon, laughing with unfeigned pleasure at the sight of the pain resulting._

_A wronged lover might be able to get past having precious memories perverted by a smiling demon. Said lover's friends and confidants? different matter entirely. And if you introduced yet another person into the dynamic …_

_Particularly if the newcomer was another Slayer._

_Faith, of course, her potential activated by the death of Kendra, coming to Sunnydale for reasons never entirely made clear, and first meeting Angel under decidedly unfavorable circumstances: Giles struck down, the duplicitous Gwendolyn Post — her true nature not yet revealed — pointing an accusing finger at the nearest likely target, Faith launching herself at the reborn vampire whose bloody reputation she had heard detailed in depth. (And it didn't help that Buffy's intervention had led to physical combat between the two Slayers; with Faith both envious of Buffy and hungry for her approval, the conflict would inevitably have felt like rejection.) Though not party to the original set of grudges, the dark Slayer had issues of her own, enough to spark an entirely independent source of distrust and disaffinity with a creature she had no particular cause to regard favorably in the first place._

_No, for any number of reasons, Angel and Faith were never likely to be close._

_That did not, however, mean they had nothing in common._

~ – ~ – ~

She came awake with a silent baring of teeth and an instinctive lunge to escape, the motion immediately thwarted by the chain that shackled her to a bracket in the wall of the mansion. It wouldn't hold her if she was determined — metal would give, would crack and eventually break under the sustained assault a Slayer could bring to bear — but it would slow her enough to give her captor time to react.

Speaking of which. Faith looked to where Angel sat by the fireplace, toying with the baseball bat that had rendered her unconscious. "You'd'a never taken me without that," she said defiantly.

Angel's response was a shrug and a glance toward the bat. "That's why I used it." Another shrug. "Sorry about the chains. It's not that I don't trust you, but … well, I don't trust you."

Faith laughed. While finding herself in captivity wasn't a new experience (unwelcome, yes, but she had some experience there), disapproval was an old and familiar friend. "Finally decided to tie me up, huh? Always knew your history would come with its share'a kinks."

She'd been trying to get a rise out of the vampire (make 'em uncomfortable, even angry, you could use that), but Angel wasn't biting. "Been there, done that. Right now, I've got other things on my mind."

Faith's natural attack response wouldn't help right now; she reined it in, aware of just how defenseless she was here. "Look," she wheedled, "the thing with Xander, I know what that looked like, okay? But we were just playing."

No smile on that pale face. "And he forgot the safety word?" Angel's tone was even, revealing nothing. Then, rising and walking toward her: "Is that it?"

Now nothing could override her innate defiance. "Safety words are for wusses," Faith said with open scorn.

Angel knelt in front of her, those depthless obsidian eyes revealing nothing. "You're not big on trust games, are you, Faith?"

The intrusion into her space, the physical challenge, was overt and deliberate. That didn't mean it had no effect. Faith felt a stab of desire, instantly quenched by the determination to be ruled by nothing outside her own will. "You gonna try and shrink me now?" she snarled. "Is that it?"

"No," Angel said, soft and controlled. "I just want to talk to you."

Which probably would have worked a lot better without the bat to the face as an intro. Or maybe not. "That's what they all say," Faith shot back. "Then it's just, 'Lemme stay the night. I won't try anything, I promise.' "

Those unreadable eyes regarded Faith with no sign of actual curiosity. "Do you really see that as being an issue between us?"

"Voice of experience," Faith shot back. "You tellin' me the thought never crossed your twisty little mind?"

Faith had developed some expertise with hitting where it hurt, but this sally had no effect. "You want to go the long way around, here?" Angel asked, impersonally as if addressing a talking gerbil. "I can do that." Then, standing without hurry: "I'm not getting any older. You can't say the same for yourself."

Then her captor left, walking out of the atrium. Faith didn't know how long, or for what purpose — talking about her with B, or even Xander? — but she used the opportunity to attack the chain. Stouter than it had originally looked, maybe this was one of the bunch B had used to restrain Angel while waiting for sanity to come creeping back, it would take more than an hour of focused and knowledgeable effort to weaken it to the breaking point. Faith gave it her all, there was no telling how long the vampire would be gone, and fighting was better than waiting helpless.

She wouldn't really have killed Xander. She wouldn't have.

Not on purpose.

She wasn't even aware of Angel's return, at first, so total was her onslaught on the fettering chain and her own unwelcome memories. Then she felt it, that flickering itch of Slayer awareness, and looked up to see that the vampire was back, installed again at the vantage point at the fireplace, regarding her with that insufferable air of emotionless assessment. "I know what's going on with you," Angel observed conversationally.

Faith's lips twisted in automatic derision. "Join the club. Everybody's got a theory."

"Right." Angel stood, moved forward to face her. "But, trust me on this, I know what it's like to take a life. To feel a future, a world of possibilities, snuffed out by your hand. I know the power in it, the exhilaration." A pause, a breath. (Punctuation only, vampires didn't need air to function.) "It was … heady. Invigorating. Like a drug."

"Yeah?" Faith sneered. "Sounds like you need some help. Like maybe a professional."

The response was a dismissive flick of one hand. "A professional couldn't have helped me." Angel sat on the coffee table a few feet from where Faith was shackled. "The appetite I'm talking about? it stopped when I got my soul back. My human heart." A moment's pause, a sidelong look. "You already have that, though. But still the appetite. I think you can see why we're concerned here."

Faith's laugh was derisive, mocking. "Is that really the reason you've got me locked up for bondage fun? Or is it something else?" She leaned forward, all her physical vulnerability not enough to keep her from launching the challenge. "Me and Xander. That's really what's getting to you, isn't it? He was with me. _He moved on._ And you just can't deal with that."

Angel's expression went blank, remote. Then, quietly and with absolute steadiness: "You're here because you killed someone. By accident, I understand that, but you followed it by saying flat-out that you felt no regret, no remorse. Then I caught you straddling Xander with your hands around his throat." A sigh. "The first part, I could deal with; the second, yes, I have a problem there." Then Angel leaned toward Faith, mirroring the dark Slayer's earlier motion, and the expression on that face was amused and knowing and infuriatingly dismissive. "Besides," Angel added softly, "do you really believe you gave Xander what he gave me? that moment of perfect happiness?" The righteous moralizing had been replaced by something else, and Angel's total assurance was too smugly self-satisfied to be anything but genuine. "If you think that, you don't know him at all. Or me. Or yourself."

And then, before Faith could begin to formulate a reply, the goddamn Watchers broke in, Wussley Wyndham-Pryce at the forefront brandishing a cross, and in moments Angel was snared in net and ropes and beaten down with crowbars and dismissed as immaterial (Christ, couldn't anyone just fucking _kill_ vampires anymore?), and Faith was immobilized in even heavier chains and borne away for what these jerkweeds thought was judgment.

Didn't matter, not really. It just meant the reckoning would come later, after Faith had been given the time to work up some _really_ sweet retribution.

'Cause when it came to sex, she had skills, mad skills, and nobody — but nobody — was gonna diss her on that.


	3. Part 3

Part III

_Forgiveness came hard, but it wasn't necessarily impossible. Being able to move past the consequences of the transgression, however, was a different matter. The restored Angel was truly not guilty of the sins committed by the pitiless demon who had gleefully preyed during the absence of the restraining soul … but the effect of those sins, the memory of sadistic gibes delivered by that voice, coming from that face, was too much to overcome._

_Too much. No matter how deeply both of them might wish otherwise._

_Even with forgiveness, there could be no return to what had been. Reliance, trust, shared battles — and a dance at the prom, holding one another close, surrendering to moment and memory and yearning while poignant music swirled around them — these were possible, but not any semblance of belief in a shared future. Not that, not ever again._

_Still, it was something. And it was needed, in the battle ahead._

_They met it, all of them together. Not without cost: Faith, gutted and left comatose in Buffy's attempt at supplying the stricken Angel with the only known cure (because, regardless of old injuries, the Slayer would do whatever she could for the sake of those she loved); Larry, Harmony, so many other comrades — and Snyder — dead in the brutal melee of the Ascension; the breaking of all ties with the Council of Watchers; even Anya's angry, acrimonious desertion. But meet it they did, and in the end they prevailed._

_That still left the aftermath._

~ – ~ – ~

Cinders and flakes of ash still fell from the darkened sky. (The eclipse had faded after the thwarted Ascension, but premature nightfall had taken its place. Apparently, these things took time to sort themselves out.) Some of them still had ringing in their ears, from the climactic explosion, and it could only be hoped that this, too, would eventually dissipate. For an unmeasured time after the Mayor-demon's obliteration, they had all been occupied in seeking and succoring survivors, helping to coordinate the rescue effort, and finally avoiding the attention of those police who had at last arrived. Once having done all that could be done, they had eventually found one another for what — they were well aware — would probably be their last shared memory here in the place that had been the site of so many.

"We got off pretty cheap," Xander observed, it would seem to all of them in general and no one in particular. "You know, considering."

Considering how bad it might have been. Right. Still, it had been bad enough. "Seems like we did," Buffy agreed, with a kind of distant numbness.

Fired by the Council or not, Giles was and always would be Buffy's Watcher. "Are you all right?" he asked, with restrained but instant concern.

"I'm tired," Buffy admitted. More to it than that, so much more, but the words would have to do for now.

"I should imagine so." Giles smiled at her, rueful, relieved. "It's been quite a couple of days."

With all the unreality trying to crowd its way into her head, Buffy still found herself noticing details in those around her. There was a mottling bruise on Cordelia's bare arm, obvious finger marks where someone (some_thing,_ more likely) had grabbed her. A spatter of blood showed on Oz's cheek and shoulder: no visible wound, so not his own blood. Willow, grinning giddily in post-survival exhilaration, had a torn sleeve and three broken fingernails on her left hand. Xander …

"Angel made it through the fight," Buffy said quietly to Xander. His head whipped around, his eyes meeting hers, and she went on, "I saw … while we were helping the others … standing there, watching us …" She shook her head, struggling to form a coherent sentence. "I mean, I know what you told me, how Angel would be leaving once it was all over …" She ground to a halt. "I guess … I guess a big goodbye was just too painful. But I wanted you to know: Angel made it through."

Xander nodded, quick and choppy. "Thanks," he said to her.

The exchange had taken place in murmurs, a moment private if not precisely secret, and perhaps Giles's hearing hadn't fully recovered from the library demolition, because he was still going on as if unaware of their words to one another. "— certain dramatic irony that's attached to all this. A synchronicity that, that almost borders on predestination …"

"My brain isn't really functioning on the higher levels," Buffy said to him. She sighed deeply. "Right now, it's pretty much 'fire bad, tree pretty'."

Giles shook his head. "Yes. Of course. Sorry." He had been cleaning his glasses (naturally), and now he put them back on. "I suppose I should go check on Wesley. I don't believe he was too badly injured, but —" He wandered toward where rotating lights indicated fire trucks and paramedics.

Buffy's eyes followed him dully … then came into sharp, abrupt focus. Angel was standing by one of the emergency vehicles, shrouded in wisps of smoke and backlit by strobing lights, those piercing eyes locked on … Buffy glanced to her side, saw that Xander had seen, was returning that fixed stare. Then a shift of breeze pulled a deeper curtain of smoke over the spot where Angel stood, and when it cleared the space was empty.

She looked again to Xander. His shoulders had slumped slightly, in relief or resignation or perhaps some emotion she couldn't guess, but his face showed nothing. Her heart twisted suddenly in the awareness of all they had suffered, all they had lost, all the possibilities that had never come to pass, and for a moment she started to reach out to him … but then she let her hand fall, and kept her own face clear of betraying emotion. Some things were simply better left unsaid. Maybe forever.

"You know," she noted matter-of-factly, "if someone could just wake me when it's time to go to college …?"

"Right there with ya," Oz agreed.

A chapter in their lives had ended, and somehow they had survived the process. It only remained to see what would come next.

She didn't know what that might be. She did know it would be different.

With Angel gone — finally — it would have to be.

~ – ~ – ~

_Originally it had been a whim, no more than that. Liam was always full of whims, even in his breathing days, and his rising as undead had found him with just as much appetite and (he thought) a grander imagination. This one could just as easily have gone another way, and almost did: simply kill his once-beloved sister, instead of turning her; leave her discarded by the door while he put all his focus into vengeance on the despised father._

_It almost went that way … but it didn't. Darla hadn't actually taught him how to sire another, but he remembered how it had been done to him, and he took the extra few minutes to still her heart slowly, feeding her his blood in those last moments of life. After that, it was just a matter of carrying her back to his 'lodgings' and waiting to see what she would be like in her new awakening._

_When her eyes opened after the requisite three nights, he was waiting, watching … and after a moment of surprise, she smiled at him in recognition and understanding. "And I called you an angel," she said in amusement. "Oh, Liam, you naughty boy!"_

_"No angels here," he answered cheerfully. "Darla's been in a pique since I brought you back, but she'll come around in time. Let's go out walking, sweet Kathy: I've an entirely new world to show you."_

_She rose obediently, but with a frown. "Kathy is a wee girl's name," she told him. "I'm thinking it doesn't really suit me now."_

_"You can choose another, then," Liam said expansively. "You'll find we've no limits on us here."_

_"A new name." The smile returned. "Ah, and I know just the one."_

_Another whim. And, like so many others, it carried unexpected consequences._

_Liam was wrong about Darla coming around; she'd created her new toy to play with, not share, not just yet. Despite her age and power and craftiness, she underestimated what she had made (and what he had made in his turn), and in her exasperation she unwisely attempted imperious command before she had secured adequate control and allegiance. Another of Liam's impulses, and his sire was startled dust dissolving around the stakes her two rebellious get had thrust into her._

_Such a waste, Liam had mused. So exciting, so glorious … but something of a shrew, and it just wouldn't do to be letting a woman order him about. Besides, there was more than enough pleasure to be had with his newer companion._

_They made a sensation wherever they went. His sister had been nearly fifteen at her death, though looking younger, but this was an era when it was still not uncommon for a female to be married already at that age, and she learned with dress and cosmetics and the proper air of assurance to come across as older. Still, she would always seem, at best, a child bride (if anything so respectable), and they played to the responses of the society around them with the same vast amusement they drew from everything else in their new existence._

_And, oh, the century-and-some they shared …_

_Drusilla was a mutual project. William, originally an indulgence they allowed Drusilla … and, even as he remade himself into something tougher, more fierce, more rough-and-tumble, they kept him at heel, taking turns forcing him to acknowledge their vicious mastery. With and without those two, Liam and his dreadful sister cut a swath through nations and principalities, decaying empires and robust thriving colonies. Scandalous, murderous, terrible and pitiless and hedonistic._

_Then the Kalderash curse, and everything changed._

_Instant, disgusted rejection by her brother, and self-exile. Decades of a squalid, desperate existence, not ready to die but incapable of facing life. Degradation willingly accepted but bringing no expiation for sins keenly remembered and (horribly) still dimly relished. Finally, recruitment by the ever-annoying Whistler, and arrival in Sunnydale to aid the newest Slayer in her still-developing destiny. A tentative beginning made, stretched out over cautious weeks, suddenly devolving into disaster (Buffy finding her supposed 'ally' standing over her bleeding mother, a hasty escape, the confrontation at the Bronze wherein a jealous, death-bent Liam was finally dispatched by his sister-lover-childe), and at last gradually firming into an active and worthwhile partnership._

_And then Xander. Oh, Xander._

_Belief. Trust. Love. Happiness._

_Doom._

_Blithe, triumphant return to Spike and Drusilla, to the freedom of conscienceless evil. Lengthy, inventive torment of the one who had so unwisely and disastrously loved her. The re-imposition of mastery upon two who had spent most of a century ruling themselves … and the unexpected result, when Drusilla (driven by nobody knew what set of mad visions) treacherously made an alliance with the Slayer, attacked Spike and her own sire at the moment Acathla's revivification began, then roared away in the DeSoto with her comatose lover while the Slayer and their sire fought to the death._

_Hell. Unmeasured eons of suffering in Hell._

_Then expulsion from Hell, and weeks of recovery while instinctively avoiding the man she had so unforgivably betrayed. (Who, she learned only much later, had spent his own time in limbo, throwing himself into the fight against vampires alongside a street-gang in Los Angeles.) Unanticipated and incomprehensible aid from the Slayer, accepted if never understood. Being able to contribute, finally, in the showdown against the Sisterhood of Jhe, and the slow return to something like acceptance, in something like a meaningful existence._

_Learning of Xander's coupling with Faith, and carefully remaining distant from it in spite of distinct reservations. (He deserved something better than herself … but, come to that, better than Faith as well.) Intervening only when the dark Slayer visibly began going off the rails, and that intervention — except they didn't know it then — leading to the troubled girl's final self-commitment to darkness._

_Preparation to face the Ascension. Working side-by-side with someone whose eyes she couldn't meet, but doing what needed to be done. Being struck down, and then fed Faith's blood (barely enough, even in extremity the reformed vampire had been able to force herself not to drain the outlaw Slayer entirely) to effect an undeserved cure. The final battle … and, long known to be coming and at last arrived, the final departure._

_A different life. A different mission. A different chance, perhaps, for unmerited redemption._

_In the City of Angels._

~ – ~ – ~

In the lobby of the Hyperion Hotel, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce paced unhurriedly, one finger tracing a line of text in an ancient volume. There were hints of something that might pertain to the _shanshu_ prophesied for the leader of Angel Investigations, and as their primary researcher it was Wesley's responsibility to stay informed of such things. Of course, at the moment that leader was off seeking enlightenment (or some similar nonsense) from someone called the T'ish Magev … but once that was done, Wesley would be ready with such answer as was available —

A muscular hand seized his neck from behind, and he was cranked into an immobilizing hold before he could think to respond. Sour breath filled his nostrils, and in a rough voice his unseen captor demanded, "Where's Angel?"

Wesley ceased his struggle; he could feel the strength of the other man, knew it was too much for him to overcome in this helpless position. "Sh–… hkk— not here," Wesley gasped through a constricted windpipe.

"You're lying," the other man said, and increased the pressure against Wesley's throat. "Give me Angel."

"I … I can't …" Blackness began to edge Wesley's vision, that iron grip was cutting off the blood flow to his brain. "Please … please, let go —!"

The pressure vanished, and Wesley staggered at the sudden influx of oxygenated blood. When he looked up, however, the other man — a gangster of some type — was leveling a pistol at him. "My boss needs your boss," the man said, "which means I can't go back by myself. So you are gonna get Angel for me, right now, or I'm gonna blow your head off."

"No!" Wesley stammered. "I-I-I can't, Angel isn't _here —"_

The other man shook his head, drew back the pistol's hammer. "Too bad," he said, without resentment but with clear lethal intent.

"Wait," Wesley protested. "Wait, listen, I … I …" He could see motion behind the gangster, this might be rescue, he had to keep the fellow's attention on him. "Please, wait."

"Nothin' personal," the man said. "But I gotta be able to say I gave this a serious effort, so …"

A new, hard voice broke the tableau: "I'm Angel." The other man instantly stepped back, making enough distance to keep Wesley in his side-vision while he turned to face the newcomer. "I understand you're looking for me?"

Oh, dear Lord. Cordelia, wearing the long black coat Angel had left hanging in the office. Her hair was bound back from the high-cheekboned face, her expression haughty and imperious … but anyone who had ever seen the actual Angel would know instantly that this was a different woman.

The intruder tilted his head appraisingly. "You're taller than I heard," he observed.

"Heels, dummy." Cordelia strode forward, the acting ability that always deserted her on stage flowing out of her now in almost visible waves of power. "You say your boss has business with me? Let's get to it."

Wesley thought to protest, but in truth there was nothing he could do here. He would have gladly traded places with Cordelia; however, too many people knew the basic facts about the leader of Angel Investigations … and even if they hadn't, nobody would actually believe 'Angel' was a man's name.

Not in this universe.

—

end

* * *

**_Special acknowledgment:_** Almost all of the dialogue in this story was taken direct from canon episodes, and then adjusted (sometimes slightly, sometimes substantially) to show the effects of a diverging timeline. The episodes from which dialogue was extracted were "Angel", "School Hard", "Killed by Death", "Revelations", "Consequences", "Graduation, Part 2" (all _Buffy_), and "Guise Will Be Guise" (_Angel_). All credit is due to the talented writers of the two series.


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